Author
Topic: bar maintence (Read 2987 times)

lately when i do inspections im just looking at all the norn : queen, eggs, brood, comb.while im doing that i move my topbar off to the side. when i make it over to the other i start moving my topbars back.when i move them back im fixing problems as i move bars back and closing up the hive. am i doing this rite or should i try to fix as i go into the inspection?last time i went out was to fix cross comb and havent been back since do to weather. i had to cut cross comb to open bars so i dont know if i still have a queen.i always look for the queen b4 i ever do anything just in case. she is marked and we didnt see her this last time. hoping to go out tommorrow and fix more comb and hope i didnt kill her. im also noticing the bees are getting more agressive and beeing a newb and sorta scared now from stings LOL i just want it to go fast and painless.

The point is to get the combs straight. It does no good to just remove bad comb, they will just rebuild it. The bees build parallel combs, so you need the last comb they are gauging the next comb from, to be as straight as possible. One way to do this is keep feeding empty bars into the middle of the brood nest (one at a time) so that comb will be between two straight combs and therefore will be a straight comb. One good comb leads to another. One bad comb leads to another.

No. They will never fix the bad. They don't view it as bad. But if you put an empty between two straight BROOD combs, they will draw a straight comb between. If you replace the last comb with a straight comb, the odds of the next being straight improve. Be careful, especially if SHB are an issue where you live, having the face of a comb against the face of another comb as they small hive beetles will leverage that to get started.

If it has brood in it you can move it towards the back but you might wind up with it resulting in more wonky comb. I've read you can sometimes just cut it off and lean in in an emptish part of the hive (make sure the bee's can get to both sides of it) until the brood hatches out. The queen won't go back down there to lay more eggs. I've been fortunate that my comb problems are curling at the ends not totally crossed comb.

i could take the cross/bad comb from the front of the hive add a few bars between the good and the bad?would that help? would the queen still lay eggs? im at 12 bars atm with 2 of them empty and around 4 that are bad.

Is there anyway you can gentle press it in the right direction. If you can't do that can you cut it out and tie or rubber band it in. That is one of the reasons I built frames for my TBH, they build most all straight. One may learn a little to one side or the other, but I can push it back straight. Good luck zzzzzpr.

well i just bought a table saw to build regular hive and frames.yes i may try to buikld frams for my tbh. i have to cutout part of the comb and the other i may be able to turn and push on the topbar.so far so good on my second tbh its all striaght due to the learning of the 1st one.

I have been looking for comb maintenance discussions as I have a new Top Bar, my Bee's have been busy for 3 weeks now building combs.....all appear to be straight with the exception of one they are building on the floor of the hive. It only became visible the other day. If left in place it would be in the brood area, I suspect I won't be disturbing the hive in that area any time soon? What do I do now? Remove the misplaced comb? If I don't what can I expect ?

If it is under bars with comb on it, it will become a problem. I would remove it. If it is a significant amount of comb and it has eggs or larvae in it I would move it towards the back (so it isn't under any bars with comb being drawn on them, otherwise just chuck it. I doubt it is straight enough to bother trying to tie off to a bar.

If you move it try and make sure both sides of the comb are accessible, I'm not sure if SHB are a problem in Michigan but comb that the bees can't get into is exactly the sort of place SHB will go.